Question

I would like to know what the best way would be to loop through a dropdown list in html to see if and item has been selected or not.

I know in C# it would be something along the lines of

int selected = cmbFamily.SelectedIndex;

        for (int loop = 0; loop < cmbFamily.Items.Count; loop++)
        {
            if (selected == -1)
            {
                MessageBox.Show("please select an item", "Please", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
                break;
            }
        }

how would I go about in doing this with javascript?

<tr style="font-size:12pt; font-weight:bold; color:#FFFFFF; font-family:High Tower Text;">
                    <td>Family to join:</td>
                    <td><select name="drpFamily">
                        <option/>-select-
                        <option/>Gambino
                        <option/>Genovese
                        <option/>Lucchese
                        <option/>Colombo
                        <option/>Bonanno
                    </select><font color="red">*</font></td>
                </tr>

Kind regards
Arian

Answer 1

First off you HTML code is totally wrong. It is not </option>text, it is <option>text</option>

To loop through the options it is as simple as

//var options = document.getElementById("selectId").options;
var options = document.formName.selectName.options;
for(var i=0;i<options.length;i++){
  if(options[i].selected){
     alert(options[i].value);
  }
}

but there is no need to loop through a single select. The easiest way is just to use selected index for a single select.

//var sel = document.getElementById("selectId");
var sel = document.formName.selectName;
var opt = sel.options[sel.selectedIndex];
alert(opt.value);